Two Years On - 29th June 2007

I am going to mark this day with two more poems - then move on to where M would wish me to be.

Wee Mags

I held your hand, you slipped away.
My heart had so much left to say.
Yet nothing new, nothing more,
Nothing we had not said before.

Yet why did we not talk of death,
In all those days before you left?
We daren’t accept, nor want to know,
It wasn’t in your plans, to go.

So still I hold your hand, my love,
There’s so much left to say.
Keep my hand and smile on me,
We’ll talk another day.

August 2005

My M.

Do you remember still?
Remember those days?
Remember those days when we walked by the river,
Where we talked and we planned, as we sat in the sun?
Watching our dreams
Float sweet on the water
Drifting, so silver, so bright on the river.
And oh….
How surely it flowed.
To its end.
Like our hopes and our fears,
Like our dreams – now my tears,
I live to survive,
No more hopes,
No more dreams.
Yet the river flows on, like a silver stream.
Let me stay.
Let me cry.
‘Till I find you again,
Let me dream.


July 2005

I wasn't going to wtrite about this - but, impulsively, have decided to. I had to get E into hospital on Saturday as she was experiencing severe tummy pains; and had been for a couple of days. From A&E she was admitted, for further checks. On a trolley, she was wheeled up to the medical wards and as we approached the wards (5,6,7 to the left, 8,9,10 to the right) she closed her eyes, went very pale and whispered "Please turn left. Please turn left." We were going right to the wards that Mags had been in - and where she had been to the day, 2 years ago.
We did go left. Thankfully.
How strange that we should be forced by fate to go into that hospital and into those wards, on the very day (23rd June) that I was told that Mags was not going to pull through this time. She stayed there for 6 more days.
Happily. E is out again, on a very strict no-fat diet, with scans and possible op. to come.
Maybe a good place to post a couple more bits of verse, written soon after that dark time.

FATE

I’ve thought about dying.
Since our Mags.
Thought about death
Not in a frightening way.
And love
About their pain and beauty
And about fate.
For fate defines our love
Just as it defines our death
And perhaps, our way of going.

Mags left, so peacefully
And I believe
Fate allowed her
To hold the hands
Of those she loved the most in this whole world.

She was content
Fulfilled within her departing world.
Fate was good to her.
In that sense.
I’ve thought a lot about dying - since then.

And I hope fate is good to me.
Because there is one
Who loves me enough
Loves me in that quiet, loyal and undemanding way
To quietly sit
And stay
And listen
And silently cry with me
For what we both will lose.
She’ll be there,
If fate is kind.

My Love.

Are you happy, my love?
In that place where you are?
Are you smiling in peace?
Are you touching your star?
Are you feeling at last, that life can be good,
The way that we hoped, that one day it would?

No more worry or doubt
What’s this pain all about?
No more scans,
No more tests,
No more chemo
Or rests,
To recover your strength so you’re ready again,
For the checks.
For the drugs.
For the hair.
For the pain.

Are you happy, my love, where you are?


August 2005

Another picture of the Triumph mentioned below. That's cool!

Motorcycles today. I am cosidering changing my lovely Honda CBF1000 for something a little less demanding....something more befitting my age and ambitions! A bike that will swing bends happily and safely, burble pleasantly along sun dappled country lanes, be fast enough to get safely past and away from badly driven cars - and yet won't keep tempting me to emulate my idol Rossi and push my limits beyond where they can reasonably expect to be!

I've looked at Harley Davidsons. The Sportster 1200 is nice...but..........well, I haven't any tattoos and my hair isn't long enough for a ponytail!

No. I like the new 'Classic' Triumphs - and particularly the Bonneville T100. Maybe that is what I shall end up with?

Whilst we are on the subject of bikes, here's a picture of my ES2 Norton. 1953 and still beautiful! It has to go, however. I am running out of space and ability to look after them all. She needs more love and attention than I am able to give her. Anyone want her? I am open to negotiation! Have a look at the engine too!

The sun shone a bit today, which was lovely after so much dullness and dampness. E took this old blind chap into Berwick for a trip round the shops! Nice! But very tiring. This eye of mine makes me very dizzy because it doesn't behave like the other. It'll get better in time.
Bit more writing to post today. This was an exercise for my course and length was limited to 500 words. The idea came when I was sitting in a gereatric ward where M was temporarily placed once, due to a bed shortage! Heaven save me from a fate such as this!

George

It’s the same every morning. Every time I wake up and look around the ward, I feel depressed. There’s only six beds in here and it’s a nice enough room – bright and light - but a bit niffy if you know what I mean. Well, it’s the old chap across from me. Eighty-one he is. Every night he pees the bed and sometimes more than that – well it’s bound to niff a bit, isn’t it? And there’s him in the other corner. Jimmy. Breaks wind all night and keeps shouting out and moaning on about someone called Mary. Drives me potty!
It wouldn’t be so bad if they paid a bit more attention to us – like, if the nurses poked their head in a bit more often. Geriatrics, we’re called. I saw it on the door as I was brought in ten days ago. Geriatrics? Sounds like a disease. Even feels like a disease sometimes, the way we get ignored. I mean, I know they’re busy but if they’d just clean old what’s-his-name up a bit more often, he wouldn’t smell so much, would he?
“Morning George. How are you today?”
It’s that chirpy little nurse with the curly hair and bouncy chest. Always asking how I am and then not listening when I tell her. Smiles as bright as a sparrow but never looks at you.
Never looks you in the eye. And it’s the way they talk to you - like kids – George this and George that. I mean, years ago I’d have been Mr. Wilson to her, nurse or no nurse.
“Didn’t sleep last night.” I says. “Chest really hurt and couldn’t breathe at all well.”
“Oh dear George. We’ll have to see what we can do for that.”
Squeak, squeak - shoes across the lino, chest bouncing like always, as she goes across to old Jimmy.
It’s like playing a record. Wind it up. Needle on.
“How are you Jimmy? Oh dear, we’re all wet again. You’re a bad lad aren’t you? I’ll have to come back and sort you out. Soon as I can. OK?”
And she’s gone again.
The worst bit is, you can lie here and listen to all the coming and going up the corridor – people speaking and laughing and having fun – but it doesn’t touch us in here.
Here, it’s just lonely. There isn’t anyone left to come and visit me. Or anyone that wants to bother. Sometimes, in the night, it’s so damn lonely it’s like – it’s like a noise – a great deafening noise! I have to put my hands over my ears to try and shut it out. I get to thinking that there has to be some way over this - something better.
Like, beyond this?
I know I’m a man and all that - and it sounds stupid – but some nights, in the dark, I just lie there and cry my eyes out.
And still no one comes……

I came across this picture a long time ago and it evoked such wonderful memories of Summers gone by - Summers that were full of warmth and peace and fun.

I just want to sit beneath that tree with a good book for an hour or two...........

Time for a bit more writing from last year.

DOVES

Not all doves crap.
Here I was,
Lying in the sun, and two doves fluttered in,
On whistling wings
Busily intent on procreation - by the look of it.
They jostled each other on the rim of a sunshade
But
She didn’t fancy it and they flew away.

And then it ocurred to me.
There are dozens of them.
Cooing in the morning -and the evening
Yet not a drop of crap.
Not anywhere.

Canarian doves.
Fuerteventurian doves.
Educated.
Considerate.
They must crap somewhere
But
Not around here, they don’t.


At the Poolside. Fuerteventura. 2006

Back Again.

I'm back to "normality" again, after an enforced few days absence caused by a detached retina that needed some pretty speedy attention! How vulnerable we are to all these faults and glitches that occur in our bodies. One thing that stays with me after this latest episode is how well our much maligned NHS copes with and comforts us, when these vulnerabilities are exposed. I was processed through the system with efficiency, care and understanding by people who were kind and concerned about my sight. That was very reassuring. I now have a gas bubble in my right eye that - when I hold my head in a certain position - floats up and preses the retina into place, where it should be! I have to do this often,each day. It will be eventually replaced, naturally, by fluid and become a normal eye again! At the moment it is like looking through a bowl full of water! Moral of all this? Don't take eyes for granted. Look after them.

....And one more today....

FRIENDS


The world is a vast place,
And within it
Are my true friends.
Those that love me
For all my faults and failings
Concentrated
In one, small place.
A thousand miles away.
And they will always be there.
So treasure them
Take care of them
Lest they slip away and I lose them
Forever.



Fuerteventura. 14th March 2006
On the cliffs above Playa de Esquinzo, overlooking the ocean.

Thoughts

When I lost M on 29th June, 2005, I struggled with many things to do with my life. It was a dark place and a long way down. after some time, a lovely woman doctor said to me that it would be good to go away and rediscover qualities in myself that might have been suppressed within such a deep relationship as marriage. She was right. I went to Fuerteventura in March 2006 a nervous and apprehensive man - unsure who I was, where I was going or whether I would want to return to what had been our home.
It worked out.
I wrote lots while I was away which helped. I am determined this site should not become a 'shrine' to M's memory in any way. But it would be nice to post some of the wee pieces I wrote in Fuerteventura - the serious and the silly - because they were all part of my healing.
So they may crop up every so often!
Like this one....

CONCERTO


I have just listened to a violin concerto.
It was played with such a glacial finesse
With passages
Of glittering beauty
Such vibrant passion
And such shimmering sadness
It cut holes in my heart.
It closed my eyes
And reminded me
Of all things beautiful and passionate
That have ever been in my life.
And, perhaps
Have yet to come.
Once more.


Fuerteventura March 2006

Back from Holidays

Well, we are just back from a beautiful place in Fuerteventura, where the sun shone all day and the temperature was 75 to 80deg but tempered with a breeze that came off the sea and filled us with vitality and nice feelings. It is a wonderful island. Strange how relaxing it can be when people are never in a hurry, never seem to get angry, are so tolerant of eachother and those around them, who smile for no obvious reason and who are so patiently forgiving for those not used to driving on their roads. Why can't we be more like that?

We celebrated our birthdays while we were away. E bought me a present of something I must have mentioned ages ago; and forgotten. A Zippo! When we were stumbling through our youthful years, a cigarette lighter was a real step up toward the manhood stakes. But a Zippo!! You had arrived! The feel! The action! The smell! Burnt flint and warm petrol. I don't smoke any more but this Zippo feels good in my pocket. There was a way you could flick it down onto your thigh to open it and up again to strike it. Cool! I'm working on it!